Lane Cove Good News Story – The Sydney Edible Garden Trail

Amid the doom and gloom of Covid-19, a group of women (including two Lane Cove locals) have turned adversity into something totally inspiring.

From Little Things, Big Things Grow

The Sydney Edible Garden Trail was to be a two-day event celebrating the many ways that Sydney residents are creating food security, building self-reliance, saving money and the environment, whilst enjoying the health benefits of homegrown fruit and vegetables.

However, with just four days to go and 67 gardens registered to open the doors the public, Covid-19 threatened the closure of the event and the team had to make some hard decisions.

Do they cancel a project that’s been 12 months in the making?

Some fast creative thinking and willpower enabled the team to pivot and go virtual within days of the event. They felt it important to honour the hard work that the garden hosts had gone to prepare their gardens and all the work that the volunteer committee had achieved. As a bonus, it now meant that the gardens could be seen by many more people outside the Sydney area.

Costa Georgiadis, gardening ambassador extraordinaire jumped in to assist the Sydney Edible Garden Team and live-streamed from 12 Gardens over the opening weekend.

The Virtual Sydney Edible Garden Trail Extended

The Virtual Sydney Edible Garden Trail was so successful that it has been extended to 30 June 2020. The virtual event now has videos on seed saving, hot composting, dehydrating food and more.

With tickets at just $5, ticket holders are able to view the video feeds until end of June 2020.

All proceeds will go to building new community and school edible gardens.

The team has raised more than $10 000 so far, and tickets continue to be sold locally and internationally.

A number of local councils purchased bulk tickets to replace their sustainable event programs that were cancelled due to COVD-19.

What was going to be a huge disappointment for garden hosts and ticket holders, has turned into a truly inspiring re-imagined way to share the knowledge and passion of our Sydney edible gardening community.

The Sydney Edible Garden Trail team would love you share this article to help increase awareness and share food growing skills to the world!

Where Can I Buy the Tickets?

You can buy them online

How Did this Edible Garden Trail start?

Lane Cove local Bridget Kennedy tell us how the Sydney Edible Garden Trail idea became a reality. Take it away Bridget…

The Idea

In early March 2019, I visited the Blue Mountains Edible Garden Trail with a group from Permaculture Sydney North (PSN) . Since the demise of the ABC Open Gardens scheme, I’d had been toying with the idea of creating an annual fundraising opening Garden Trail promoting sustainable living and growing your own food. The visit to the mountains was just the impetus I needed. Within 24 hours, I had contacted Susanne Rix, the founder of the Blue Mountains Edible Garden Trail (who was keen to offer her support) and her local permaculture group, who were also excited by the idea.

Within a week, Nita Lo, Garden Co-ordinator of Permaculture Sydney North, who had also visited the Blue Mountains, reached out to Laurie Green, Founder Crop Swap Australia (and another Lane Cove local), and Janna Mizen, VP PSN. A couple of weeks later, Margaret Mossakowska of Moss House contacted me. The result was an awesome team of multi-talented women who’ve volunteered their time to make the not-for-profit Sydney Edible Garden Trail a reality.

Why Hold the  Edible Garden Trail?

The aim of the Sydney Edible Garden Trail is to encourage and inspire growing edible produce in street gardens, home gardens and public spaces across Sydney. We aim to showcase sustainable practices such as mulching for water conservation, recycling and composting to increase soil fertility and reduce landfill, planting to encourage bees, home food production to increase food security, and organic growing techniques to reduce chemical use. Often people think that growing edibles is a lot of work. Sometimes it can be, but there are also heaps of extremely low maintenance edible plants too. And, we also want to show that edible gardens can be beautiful too.

We want to celebrate the myriad of ways that Sydney residents are creating food security, saving money and the environment, while enjoying the health benefits of home grown fruit and vegetables.  We see the trail as a conduit for these gardeners to share their passion and knowledge to inspire self-reliance and a love of growing edibles in others, saving the planet one edible garden at a time.

 

Find out about Bridget Kennedy and her garden here.

Find out about Laurie Lee and her garden here.

Our cover photo is of Bridget’s beautiful Lane Cove garden.  The photo was taken by @https://www.instagram.com/ecomlocations/

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